Council of Graduate Schools (“CGS” or “we”) is committed to protecting your privacy and developing technology that gives you the most powerful and safe online experience. This Privacy Policy explains CGS's online information practices and how your information is collected and used on CGS's website. So that this Policy is easy to find, it is available to all visitors of CGS’s homepage and other webpages on the CGS website.

The details of this Privacy Policy are shared with all CGS employees in order to protect the confidentiality of your personal information.

CGS will periodically update this Privacy Policy to reflect feedback and developments in the protection of privacy.  In that event, we will notify you by email (if you have provided us with your email address) or by means of a notice on this site prior to the change becoming effective.

Collection of your Personal Information

Council of Graduate Schools collects personal information regarding your contact details, such as your email address, name, work address or telephone number. 

Information that we collect from our website includes: Name, Title, Institution, Address, Phone and fax numbers (fax numbers are voluntary), Email address, Past Employers, Educational Background, Gender Identification (voluntary), social media profiles (voluntary), congressional district, preferred language (voluntary), credit card number, expiration date, and the cardholder's name, special needs or dietary requirements (special needs or dietary requirements are voluntary). The provision of certain personal information is required for the provision of our services. If you do not provide this information, it may become impossible for CGS to provide its services to you.

CGS further collects personal information regarding your internet behavior, such as your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring website addresses and webpages visited within the CGS website.

We collect the personal information that you may provide while using the electronic services on the CGS website, such as completing an online meeting and/or webinar registration form, purchasing publications, completing an electronic survey, emailing CGS staff and internet searches. We also collect personal information if you voluntarily provide this information by, for example, exchanging business cards and when we receive this personal information via transfer by a third party.

Use (processing) of your Personal Information

Council of Graduate Schools collects and uses your personal information to operate the Council of Graduate Schools website and deliver the services you have requested.

CGS further uses your personal information for research, communicating with you and others, direct marketing and meeting exhibitors and sponsors, provision of services, performing a contract and sending event invitations. Council of Graduate Schools also uses your personal information to inform you of other products or services available from CGS and its affiliates. Council of Graduate Schools may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered. Personal information regarding your internet behavior is used for the functioning of digital services, to maintain the quality of these services and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Council of Graduate Schools website to CGS. We will not use your personal data to take any automated decision affecting you, or create profiles other than as described in this Privacy Policy.

Council of Graduate Schools does not use or disclose special categories of personal information, such as racial or ethnic origin, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

We will only process your personal information in one of the following circumstances:

• You have given your explicit consent
• The processing is necessary for the performance of a contract 
• The processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by your fundamental rights and freedoms. Our legitimate interests are the functioning of our website, research, marketing of our services, communication with our partners and other operations consistent with our mission, initiatives and objectives as set out on our website.

We will only store personal information as long as necessary for the purposes we process this information as described in this Privacy Policy and in accordance with law and regulations.

Sharing of personal information

Council of Graduate Schools may share personal information with third parties, i.e. persons affiliated with CGS (employees, contractors), individuals and entities that process personal information on behalf of CGS (IT service providers, universities, survey partners, meeting exhibitors and sponsors, webinar sponsors), and trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to Council of Graduate Schools, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

Council of Graduate Schools will otherwise disclose your personal information to third parties only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary: (a) to conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on Council of Graduate Schools; (b) for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims; and (c) in order to protect your vital interests or those of other persons or for important reasons of public interest.

CGS shares aggregated demographic information with its partners. This information does not identify individual users. CGS does not link aggregate user data with personally identifiable information in these cases.

Transfer of personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area

CGS has its headquarters in the United States.

Personal information will be processed in the United States. The United States has not sought or received a finding of “adequacy” from the European Union on which CGS can rely. CGS collects and transfers to the U.S. personal information only with your consent, to perform a contract with you or to fulfill a compelling legitimate interest that does not outweigh your rights and freedoms.

In all cases, CGS endeavors to apply appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy and security of your personal information and to use it only consistent with your relationship with CGS and this Privacy Policy. CGS also enters into data processing agreements and model clauses with its partners whenever feasible and appropriate. For further details, please contact the Office of Member Services at memberservices@cgs.nche.edu.

Use of Cookies

Users’ visits to the CGS website generate certain information that is automatically stored in log files, including Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp and clickstream data. CGS may also store information collected through cookies, log files and other technologies to create a “profile” of users’ preferences. CGS utilizes this information, which does not in itself identify individual users, to analyze trends, to administer the CGS website, to track users' movements around the CGS website, and to gather demographic information about CGS’s user base as a whole.

The Council of Graduate Schools website uses cookies to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a webpage server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you and can only be read by a webserver in the domain that issued the cookie to you.

One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize Council of Graduate Schools pages, or register with Council of Graduate Schools site or services, a cookie helps Council of Graduate Schools to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same Council of Graduate Schools website, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Council of Graduate Schools features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you may modify your browser settings to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Council of Graduate Schools services or websites you visit. Note that this policy only covers our use of cookies and does not include the use of cookies by third parties. Advertisers or other companies do not have access to our site’s cookies.

In addition, CGS uses cookies and web analytics software to track usage of the CGS website. The cookies are used by website system administration to keep track of movement of an individual user from one page to another. This information may be used by our staff to detect and resolve website problems, to assist with customer support, better maintain our website, and improve marketing practices. We do not collect any personally identifiable information about site visitors in this process. We may use this information for system maintenance and to better understand how our visitors use our site and services so that we can make them better.

Your Rights

You have the right to request access to your personal information, to request correction of inaccurate personal information and to object to processing of your personal information for a defined purpose.

You can also request deletion (erasure) of your personal information, subject to CGS’s right to retain it for legal purposes. Deletion of your personal information could result in us not being able to provide our services to you.

Where we process personal information on the basis of our legitimate interests, you can object to this processing, unless compelling legitimate grounds for processing exist or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims.

You have the right, when technically possible, to request the transfer of your personal information to another person when the processing is based on consent or on the fulfilment of a contractual obligation.

You may also change your settings regarding e-mail newsletters and to object to such processing when providing us your e-mail address (“opt-out”). You may withdraw your consent and opt-out of any future contact from us at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number given below. Every two years you will also get an email from us asking whether you wish to continue to receive our correspondence.

If you wish to exercise these rights or have any questions or complaints about our Privacy Policy, please contact the Office of Member Services at memberservices@cgs.nche.edu.

In order to protect the confidentiality of the personal information we hold, we may request you to provide a proof of your identity when you make a request. If our answer does not answer your question appropriately, you can lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority.

Security of your Personal Information

Considering the state of the art and the risks of a data breach, Council of Graduate Schools has taken appropriate technical and organizational measures to secure your personal information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. Council of Graduate Schools secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other websites, it is protected through the use of encryption, such as the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.

Our contact details:

Council of Graduate Schools

One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 230

Washington, DC 20036

(202) 223-3791 (main line)

(202) 331-7157 (fax)

memberservices@cgs.nche.edu